


The Next Ten Minutes

by rilla



Series: All The Days Of My Life [2]
Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Las Vegas, M/M, Prequel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-13
Updated: 2015-09-13
Packaged: 2018-04-20 16:03:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4793729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rilla/pseuds/rilla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An All The Days Of My Life prequel. Zayn and Harry decide to get married.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Next Ten Minutes

**Author's Note:**

> This is an extremely short prequel to [All The Days Of My Life](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3718558) that I originally posted on Tumblr - possibly it works okay as a standalone fic? Anyway, they're in Vegas. Obviously. Title from The Last 5 Years.

After the hotel bar, Zayn lets Harry drag him to the casino down the street. He’s drunk but he feels high too, like he’s bubbling over, like he’ll never be able to stop smiling as long as Harry never lets go of his hand. It’s been so long and exhausting without him. In the casino they win money, a lot of money, and then they give it away. They trail the casino together pressing handfuls of chips into people’s cups, into their hands. “Are you Harry Styles?” asks one middle aged woman, uncertain and wide-eyed, and Zayn laughs as Harry smiles, slow and dirty, and says “I’ll be whoever you want me to be.”

“I want you to be Miguel,” Zayn tells him as they’re walking away, as Harry’s grinning at a boy who definitely doesn’t look twenty-one and handing over some more chips. “I want you to be Adriana Lima.”

“I’ve never been good enough for you,” Harry says, voice light but not light enough, and it’s probably the shots from earlier that make Zayn see red.

He grips Harry’s arm and pulls him hard so Harry’s facing him. When he catches his balance again Harry looks at him, all pretty mouth, lovely eyes, long lashes, catching his breath like a fucking damsel in distress as a flush rises on his cheeks. “You are always good enough for me,” Zayn tells him, as seriously as the whisky will allow him to. The idea of Harry thinking otherwise is insane, stupid annoying Harry with his sugar sweetness and his kindness and the gentle way he’s reaching out to hold onto Zayn’s hands. He will always be good enough. He will always be too good.

Harry doesn’t say anything. Instead he smiles, and then he leans in to kiss Zayn, right there in front of everyone. Zayn should probably push him away and remind him that they’re surrounded by a million people who might be about to upload pictures of them to the internet or sell them to the Mail Online but instead his brain shorts out and he kisses him back, flings his arms around Harry’s neck and presses against him and kisses him like it’s easier than breathing. In that moment it feels like it is. It feels like he’s come home, it feels like he’s never been more comfortable or happy even with the bright lights overhead and the whizzes and flashes of the slot machines and the bright glitter of chatter and laughter from the people around them. He kisses Harry like his life depends on it, the first time in years. _You’re good enough,_ he wants to tell him. _I’m sorry that I never was. Forgive me._

He doesn’t say that. Instead he pulls back and grins up at Harry, who looks hazy-eyed and dazed and delighted. “I think we should have another drink,” Zayn tells him, a little out of breath. Harry’s face is the only thing in the entire room that’s in focus. He kind of likes it that way. Somehow, no one’s eyes are on them. For once in his life he feels invisible, as though he and Harry are in their own private world. Zayn forgot it could be like that with him.

So they drink some more. They do shots, tequila, and Harry kisses him with lime on his lips, soft and then harder, Zayn’s hands tangled in his messy hair, feeling himself edge further and further towards Harry until he’s almost on top of him. “I missed you,” Harry tells him, out of breath, warm on Zayn’s mouth, “like I can’t tell you how much I missed you, I wanted you, all this time I wanted you—”

“No,” Zayn says, because it seems insane and Harry’s not – Harry’s not that kind of person. If he had been, maybe Zayn wouldn’t have chosen Perrie. Even now the thought of Perrie is like a knife through his chest. God, he’s so tired of his bed being half-empty.

“Yes,” Harry says, eyes wide, sea-green. “Yeah. I did, I just… you’re fitter than anyone else I’ve ever seen—”

“Thank you,” Zayn says. He likes it when people compliment him on his face.

Harry laughs and shoves him lightly. Zayn’s world tilts precariously for a moment before Harry reaches out and rights his on his bar stool, letting his hands linger on Zayn’s thighs. He can feel the warmth of Harry’s palms through his jeans. He signals for more shots. “And you’re funny,” Harry says. “And you teach me things. Do you like me?” His voice is slurred, catching on the words, and his face is ridiculously hopeful, to the extent that Zayn feels like he should be laughing at him. It doesn’t seem very funny at all.

“Of course I like you,” he says, and fists a hand in Harry’s shirt, dragging him in closer, and Harry blinks at him, soft and almost sleepy, before kissing him again.

They’re even more drunk by the time they finally hop off their bar stools so they can leave to walk back to their hotel. Harry staggers and Zayn reaches out to right him and somehow Harry never quite moves his arm off Zayn’s shoulders after that until they’re outside. The streets are still busy but it’s easy to weave in and out of people. The lights look like they’re dancing, all different colours hopscotching across the sky. Zayn wants to sit and watch them for hours. “Are you sad about the band?” Harry’s saying and Zayn remembers the first bar, Harry’s head in his hands. I’m so sad, he’d said. Zayn’s sad too, but he thinks it’s in a different way. “Sometimes I think it’s not the band I’m sad about,” Harry says, and almost trips up over absolutely nothing.

Zayn viciously kicks nothing out of the way. “Are you sad about me?” he asks, and frowns. “Sometimes I’m sad about you. I really missed fucking you.”

“Did you fuck other people?” Harry asks unsteadily. “Like other boys?”

“Maybe,” Zayn says. “Sometimes.”

“Oh.” Harry blinks at him.

“It was different. You were you,” Zayn explains, and Harry seems to get it, eyelashes batting, nodding, and then he leans in and kisses Zayn on the street, right there and then, long and hot and lingering, his arm curled possessively around Zayn’s neck.

“Promise you won’t forget me,” Harry says when he draws back. “Promise me.” He glances around. “We should get tattoos. We should… you know. Remember this.”

“I’ll always remember it,” Zayn says. Harry in the street in Vegas with a million people around him and the sweetest words on his mouth and lime on his lips and his fingers tangled in Zayn’s hair. The weight of his arm, the smell of him, citrus and clean sweat and cologne. “You’re really lovely,” he says to Harry, not quite on purpose.

“So are you,” Harry says. Zayn sees his throat contract. “Promise me?”

“Promise you what?”

“That you’ll always remember!” So drunk, so stern. Zayn has to laugh at him.

“Always,” he says. “Tattoos are a good idea.”

“Tattoos are always a good idea,” Harry agrees. He doesn’t let go of Zayn, just glances around with uncertainty, like a tattoo shop’s suddenly going to loom at them out of the night. Then Harry’s eyes catch on something across the street, and his brow furrows. “I’ve had another idea,” he says.

“Anything,” Zayn says, somehow meaning it. They cross the street together, narrowly avoiding getting hit by a taxi, and end up outside a little white building. The Little White Wedding Chapel, it says. Oh. That’s not a tattoo shop at all.

Harry grins at him, looking a little bit insane. Every single part of Zayn is hurting with how much he likes Harry and how much he wants to keep him. “Marry me,” Harry says. All of the things that could go wrong hurtle through Zayn’s mind: Perrie’s horrified face, their fans, the newspapers, the paparazzi, their families. Louis, laughing at them forever. The fact of Harry’s face seems to outweigh all of those things though. The sweetness of him, his smile and his eyes and the faint golden prickle of stubble on his cheeks and his big hands, the gentleness of him. Zayn thinks that Harry would love him forever, if he let him. He squeezes his eyes shut. Promise you won’t forget me, he remembers Harry saying. I promise, Zayn thinks.

“Yes,” he says. “Let’s get married,” and Harry bounces to his feet again and wraps Zayn up in his arms. He finds himself laughing then, more out of joy than anything else. Harry wraps his arms around his waist and lifts him off his feet and almost drops him and then they’re both laughing and then they’re kissing somehow, the lights dancing around them, footsteps and people and noise, and his arms around Harry’s neck and his eyes dazzled a little by the wedding chapel’s neon sign when he opens them finally, and their whole lives stretching out ahead of them, as far as Zayn can see.

**Author's Note:**

> My tumblr is [flomps](http://flomps.tumblr.com) and my twitter is [foracorkscrew](https://twitter.com/foracorkscrew) \- say hi! This was originally posted [here](http://flomps.tumblr.com/post/125118369081/fic-post-all-the-days-of-my-life-prequel).


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